


hanakotoba

by Angramainyus



Category: Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types, Rockman.EXE | Mega Man Battle Network
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Platonic Partnership, Pre-Canon, slice-of-life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 10:05:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12033654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angramainyus/pseuds/Angramainyus
Summary: the Japanese language of flowers.Woodman thought as well of Daisuke and Quickman as his Operator did. They had been softer as youngsters. Many things were softer when they were fresh—unweathered—people included. Like trees, most only grew bent with age.Before Woodman had been there, Daisuke and Saloma had been playmates.





	hanakotoba

**Author's Note:**

> No real plot, no point, just wanted to practice writing people talking to each other.
> 
> I found it interesting, given how the anime timeline portrays their backstory, that Saloma is clearly an adult with a professional job as a NetOfficial, while Daisuke is still a college student. He’s got to be younger than her. If he’s younger than her, he probably got his NetNavi after she did, making Woodman older than Quickman. And if Saloma and Daisuke were childhood friends, that means Woodman and Quickman were likely friends at one point too?

_**Shion.** _

One of Woodman's earliest memories of Saloma was her—age six (far back, back when he had been newly installed and first pushing his way through the trial of assembling building blocks into a functioning whole, of developing his personality that every NetNavi could arrest to)—trudging through the snow to the bird feeder strung up in the tree in the backyard, with a bag of birdseed in her bulging pocket, and a kitchen stool under her arm.

“Your parents have longer legs,” His voice came out low and steady. “You could have asked one of them to do it, instead of taking the stool, yes?”

Ears stung red with cold and cheeks still round with lingering baby fat, in the memory Saloma mumbled, “Well, yeah, but that would have taken _longer_.”

“Nothin’ wrong with that. There’s ice everywhere,” Woodman said, tucked safe inside the PET but one large mitt tapping the data interface he had pulled up in front of him, detailing the local weather report.

“It might be wiser to wait until tomorrow, once the sun’s out, and it’s melted somewhat.”

“It’s not that big of a worry, Woodman.”

“It’s three feet of snow. It’s _still_ snowing. You’re a human, you don’t want to be outside when there’s more fast on the way.”

“I’ll be quick, promise,” his Operator said. The snow’s crust crunched under the stool as Saloma set her foot on it, letting her full weight rest on its legs. Standing up on her toes, she unhooked the bird feeder from the high branch it had been left up on to keep the few shrivelled leaves clinging stubbornly to the tree company, and ensure it was out of reach of the neighborhood cats.

“Which one of us has faster access to the forecast?” he said.

Snow swirled down gently.

“I wanted to do it myself. Woodman, c’mooonnn...”

Saloma clambered back down, plopping her rear down on the stool’s wet wood to unscrew the feeder’s top off. She set it next to her on the stool and fished the birdseed out of her pocket. Her fingers fumbled with it. Woodman looked at her, arms crossed. “Alright. You’re already out here, we might as well finish the job.” 

“It’s kinda nice that you fret over it, but it’s just our backyard,” Saloma said, finally tearing open the bag one-handedly and sending a few dried seeds scattering into the snow drifts.

“This isn’t like with us NetNavis, Saloma. If I got damaged cleaning out bugs from the house computer, it ain’t anything recovery data can’t fix in moments. When you get hurt, healing takes longer.” Even knowing if the snow kicked up, it would be a short distance for his Operator to flee back to the house—it was hard for him not to fret. Woodman rubbed his elbow and devoted nanoseconds to searching his memory banks to pull up: “Or… or you could lose your toes. _That_ would be a big deal!”

“My toes?” Saloma’s face scrunched up.

Woodman asserted (with the sage wisdom of somebody who typically stayed near the grade school network and assumed everybody who worked at the high school were experts who knew what they were talking about),“I heard about it from one of the Navis who manages the videos stored in the school library for the science classes. If someone gets too cold in the material world, their limbs can—”

She flapped a hand, round face loosening with a smile. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry! If you’re that worried about my toes, I’ll be quick, I already said so.”

“I include all of you when I think of your welfare, toes included.”

“Smarty-pants!” Saloma said, screwing the top to the birdfeeder back on.

Woodman rumbled out in a slow drawl. “ _What_ pants?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sure.”

“You’re being silly.”

“Well, you’re not _wrong_.”

Quiet settled down comfortably. Saloma turned the birdfeeder over in her hands. One could see the hundreds of seeds inside rolling about through the dull glass.

“Hey, Saloma?”

“Huh? Yes?”

“Why do you want to feed the birds even if it’s so cold out? I know you adore animals, but—but why do this?”

She blinked snowflakes out of her eyes and glanced at the PET’s screen with an owlish look. The blue, electric light streaming out of it served well enough as a makeshift flashlight when the yellow blocks from the house’s frosted windows no longer could reach out far to touch the back of the backyard. (But nighttime in the material world slid everything into a shade of blue anyway, from Woodman’s vantage point inside the network.) “What?” she said.

“When it’s this snowy, the birds will eat it empty before the end of tomorrow,” he pointed out, honestly curious. Woodman had done the calculations and the figures had came back to declare so. He thought he ought to share. Perhaps human children like his Operator, lacking the computing space at this early life stage, couldn’t get the information like he could. “There’s only so many it can feed. It’s not going to _do_ much.”

“Oh,” Saloma shifted on the stool. “I know that. I mean—well, I know it’s small. But, even if it’s small,” she glanced off to the side, seeing the spindly outlines of the trees raising up outside the backyard. “It feels good to help. Food matters when you’re hungry and it’s really, really cold, right?”

It took him a moment to run the response through his processing queues.

Woodman had never experienced hunger as she understood it.

Of course, he had never gone without electricity he needed for power from the moment he had been activated either. (There had always been the network or the PET charger or a spare cable or the truck’s computer to be plugged into. There had always been a source of fuel. He had never needed to go without.)

That did not mean he couldn’t picture how it might feel, to be deprived of it within an inch of forced shutdown. Woodman mentally substituted that in for the sensation of a physical wanting, and having that want fulfilled.

“Doesn’t it feel nice to help?” Saloma asked and stood up, balancing on the stool again so she hook the birdfeeder back up.

“Yes. Yes, it does, that’s—” Woodman finally said. ”That’s right.”

Saloma clapped her hands. “See! You get it, Woodman!” She hopped down from the stool.

Snowflakes were melting on the PET’s metal case, moisture pearling on her woolen hat and locks of thick hair peeking out from under it, as Saloma beamed at him. Woodman knew affection as a sap-thick residence in his core. “It’s not that hard to get. Let’s back inside where it’s warm, Saloma.”

 

* * *

 

 

**_Magnolia._ **

Saloma already had the names of all the different trees in the region memorized by then—maple, cherry, plum blossom, cypress, pine, elm, dogwood, juniper, willow, apple. She was less versed in wildflowers—she mixed up which flowers were daffodils and which ones were buttercups when she spotted them in cracked pots in a garden, and mistook irises for violets, but she knew red poppies, dandelions, and roses on sight.

There are trees in neat rows on the streets she walked down on her way to school, trees and dirt and moss, and there were trees everywhere in no particular order outside of the town too.

Many things in the cyberworld came in no particular order too, just like in nature. Woodman had mentioned it to his Operator once when she commented on it, leaning up against the back of a bench by a pastry shop dappled by the shade of one of the street trees.

Saloma had assumed that the cyberworld was well-organized by its users, top to bottom. His Operator was amazed to be told otherwise.

From the PET, Woodman sneezed and pointed out that data came in millions upon millions of shapes and sizes. Because there were so many NetNavis online, each one operating in a unique manner; because new data was being added to the internet all the time; because new links were created and defunct ones abandoned to be deadends; because network pathways kept being updated… the ways one part of the cyberworld was organized didn’t tend to match up with other parts.

“Huh,” Saloma sucked in air idly and let it whistle out through her teeth. “Like how even if Mama and her friend buy the same plants, they’ll plant them in totally different spots in their gardens?”

“Like that,” Woodman hummed in agreement.

“That’s awesome!” Saloma said.

 

It was not precisely from Saloma he had took his budding spark of enthusiasm for a topic he had no physical means for interacting with.

Woodman _could_ blame his initial inklings of interest on Saloma’s decisions for what to base the code of his customizations on, but he could go no further than that. Woodman’s own fascination with wildlife can be traced back to his realization nature was a system as intricate as any computer in its own right. It had roles that needed to be fulfilled and specific conditions that had to be met for a function to be executed. It lacked an administrative unit, that was all.

And after he started thinking of it like that, it was simpler to grasp.

Beautiful, even, to see and try to understand. Like a painting.

Something worth preserving.

 

* * *

 

 

**_Freesia._ **

Another file from his memory banks, another scene where they were young.

Saloma was a short and stumpy girl and even with her and Daisuke crouched down on their knees, Daisuke was taller than her. Most people were, Woodman admitted to himself. Daisuke, now, Daisuke was built like a weed of a young boy and showed every indication of continuing to sprout up like one. The patch of tiny blue flowers their shadows lean across bob and bend softly in the breeze coming off the mountain lake.

Squinting in the bright sunlight, Saloma looked cross. “—I can’t remember. I don’t think this one’s a springstar, it just looks a lot like it? Woodman, do you know?”

“No, I don’t recognize it either.”

“Hang on, _I_ know! You were close, Sal. These are blue star creepers. It only puts out flowers for half of the year.” Daisuke said. “It’s a cute name, isn’t it? Blue star.”

“It doesn’t usually grow here,” Woodman muttered.

Quickman snapped his fingers. “Then we got lucky.”

“We did.”

“Daisuke, you really know a lot about animals and plants!” Saloma interrupted them admiringly. Animals won their inclusion in this sentence due to Daisuke’s newly-revealed ability to differentiate between the types of various slugs they kept unearthing under overturned rocks. Saloma liked slugs. She thought they were adorable. Woodman had privately concluded he didn’t see what his Operator saw in them. Moths were cooler.

Face flushing, Daisuke scratched his chin and looked away from her. “I just like mountains and nature! So I look stuff up...”

Quickman piped up, “It makes sense to learn more about the stuff you like.”

“Instead of doing things like studying for stuff you _don’t_ like, like the math test, eh?”  
  
“Hey!”

Woodman thought as well of Daisuke and Quickman as his Operator did. They had been softer as youngsters. Many things were softer when they were fresh—unweathered—people included. Like trees, most only grew bent with age.

Before Woodman had been there, Daisuke and Saloma had been playmates. They had collected rocks and clumps of leaves in funny shapes, caught caterpillars and beetles in bug nets and let them go scuttling away into the bushes again. After he had came, they had still been playmates, but they became a group of three, not two, and changed accordingly. Quickman had been a late arrival for once, bringing the count up to four.

In the instinctive logic available to all children, they often reasoned that the fastest (and most exciting) way to get to the nearby hiking trails was to go cutting off from the pavement and go over the fences and the occasional low stone walls and into the woods and the fields. They took their NetNavis with them.

Woodman liked it there, watching them scrambling over boulders and follow the trails around thick, stately trunks. The PET told him the temperatures were safely warm with the summer heat.

The birds make a racket from their nests.

Quickman liked them for disturbing the quiet—it was _weird_ to have anywhere as quiet as a forest’s depths, he retorted to Woodman’s amused inquiry as to why. Cyberspace wasn’t that quiet! Cyberspace hummed and droned and sparked!

Daisuke and Saloma bit their lips trying not to giggle.

Quickman had promptly insisted they make a game out of it, counting how many birds’ nests they could spot in the canopy on a hike. Saloma modified the rules to include beehives and anthills, after Woodman had spotted three of them before Daisuke had and gotten into an argument with him over what exactly qualified as a ‘nest.’ Quickman had sided with Woodman, over his Operator’s indignant sputtering.

 

* * *

 

 

**_Sunflower._ **

Daisuke had always been proud of his quick hands; he could fold paper in a flash, juggle like an amateur—like he was doing now, keeping three fat oranges in the air. He hadn’t mastered keeping more than that many up in the air at the same time.

The classmates he and Saloma ate lunch with whistled and clapped right up until a boy, engrossed with a conversation that kept his face turned away from the obstacles directly in his path, walked right into him. Predictably, the oranges dropped out of Daisuke’s hands, one bouncing off the table and into somebody’s lap, while the other hit the floor and rolled out of sight into the dimension occupied only by food that went missing in school cafeterias across the country. Saloma’s hand snaked out and saved the third orange from a similar fate.

Daisuke waved it off over the boy’s apologies.

Saloma rolled the orange over in her hand, inspecting it from damage visible on the skin and saw none, before handing it back to him.

 

* * *

 

 

**_Primrose._ **

Woodman had been in the television set’s cyberspace one afternoon, trying to convince the Prog to relocate to the microwave’s connection path so a few other Mr. Progs he had handpicked could take its place, when Saloma had came home in tears. Two of her schoolmates were at her side, her pants’ knees muddy and blood beading up along the angry lines trailing across her hand from a stray cat.

Saloma’s mother had thanked the other girls, sent them off, and sat her down in the kitchen and wiped the snot off her face, telling her she was a sensible girl and it wouldn’t do to be so careless. Woodman tagged along, trailing through the dishwasher up to the circuits of the dented microwave plugged in on the countertop.

“It was a wild animal, dear,” she said, sponging the dirt out before bandaging it up. Woodman went unnoticed. “You’re lucky it only scratched you.”

“But it was cute. I thought it would let me pet it like in the movies...”

Her mother brushed a loose strand out of her hair out of her face.

“It’s a living being, Saloma-chan. It doesn’t exist for your entertainment.”

Saloma sniffed, rubbing at puffy eyes. “O-oh…” 

“It’s alright. Keep it in mind later. You might have scared it by accident.”

Woodman had been distracted then by Saloma’s father pacing into the living room to knock the side of his knuckles on the laptop’s screen for his attention and ask him to call the hospital and schedule an appointment for his Operator.

 

* * *

 

 

**_Lilac._ **

Daisuke was one of those maniacs who liked to get up at the crack of dawn to jog, even on weekends. If he went early enough, the mountain mists would still come seeping through the grasses and leave them speckled with dew.

This meant little in the grand scheme of things except that since Daisuke always took his PET with him while running—running until he had his cotton shorts sticking to his legs—Woodman sometimes had to time his morning visits with Quickman to before the sun had a chance to clear the horizon and cast the tops of the trees golden.

“—and you know that Navi from the Kobayashi family? The house two blocks down from Daisuke’s house,” said Quickman. The edges of the panelled platforms under their feet shone faintly orange before they dropped off into the red void wallpapered with rotating boomerangs below them. Quickman was multitasking, talking to Woodman, eyes snapping from side to side, fingers blurring as he one-handedly typed on a touchscreen. Swaths of binary code scrolled down it. Woodman blinked.

“The one that disappeared off the net ‘bout three days ago?”

“Yeah. That’s the one.”

“Should I be readying myself for you to deliver good news or bad news here, Quickman?” asked Woodman, yellow pupils flickering in concern.

Quickman made a grunting noise in the back of his throat. “Good news, I swear.”

“Mm. Go on then,” Woodman leaned back in relief.

“They found them. Injured but in one piece, luckily.”

“What happened?”

“Got dropped into a lower network level when a pathway collapsed under their feet, PET connection cut by accident, ambushed repeatedly by viruses when they’d only a few Battle Chips loaded,” Quickman rattled off, casually ticking the events off his free hand’s fingers one by one as he said them. “Wound up somewhere south of Iwate by the time they found a way back to the surface net.”

“All that way before they got word back to the town?”

“Viruses _. Lots of them_ ,” emphasized Quickman.

Woodman took the intended reminder. “That’s got to have been an ordeal for them.”

“Yeah. According to witnesses, you wouldn’t believe the looks on their faces when a missing Navi the police were looking for came staggering into the square up there, out of nowhere, asking to call their Operator and if anybody had recovery data on hand,” Quickman snorted. “ _I_ didn’t believe it at first when I heard about it at the school either. They didn’t seem the fighting sort, you know?”

Woodman grinned. “People can catch you by surprise. Good to hear they’re alright, and back home. They’ll need the rest.” Suddenly Woodman frowned and held up a mitt. “Wait, the pathway they were on gave way under them… ? Out of nowhere? That sounds like hacker work.”

“Maybe it’s one of those net sabotage groups the adult humans have been talking about lately.”

“ _Terrorist_ groups, Quickman, not sabotage groups,” corrected Woodman.

“Whatever, either way... I don’t see why people like that would bother messing with a town out in the middle of nowhere like here,” replied Quickman, looking cheerful and unflinchingly confident in that easy way he had possessed from the moment he had introduced himself to Woodman.

 

(Somehow it had never crossed the line to irritating. Somehow. Woodman wondered where Quickman got his reserves from. It couldn’t be from Daisuke, whose sweaty, tight face could have matched a fine shade of fruit punch the first time he had lost his meter dash to a track member from another school. Daisuke, who spoke with no hesitations with Saloma, chattering, but stumbled over his words when he had to give his presentation in front of his class, to hear Quickman tell it.

He was two grades behind Saloma so Woodman hadn’t seen him in his classes. She worked in the yearbook club, he attended track meetings.

Maybe Daisuke showed a different face when it was just him and his Navi.)

 

The touchscreen closed off.

Quickman spun around and moved to re-arranging the icons around the screen set into the air. Gridlines lit up eagerly at his touch and fanned out so he could slot the icons into place. Woodman looked at the back of his head. He couldn’t see his face. Quickman continued. “It was probably a badly-coded route that wasn’t maintained and bad timing, nothing weird.”

“Hmph. I guess you have a point.”

“I usually do. Anyway, does this arrangement work?”

Woodman squinted at it. “... why on earth is the reminders icon right above the music icon? Put it next to the notes app, and the alarm app. Group them by subject, not the code’s color. That’s how I do it.”

“Blunt as usual.”

“You _did_ ask for my opinion.”

Quickman tapped the side of his helmet. “Blunt, but accurate. Sure. I’ll think about it.”

“The most I can ask for. It’s a suggestion,” Woodman spread out his mitts. “You have your way, I have mine.”

“Hah! And I’m overhauling Daisuke’s way of organizing our new PET _my_ way, he’s been letting setting it up slide this week out of nerves for an exam. Way too slow.”

“Why not tell your Operator to ask Saloma for her advice?”

“Woodman, everybody knows your Operator’s too nice! She wouldn’t say anything too sharp to anybody if she could help it,” laughed Quickman, amused. He stretched and stepped away from the screen, the contours of his shoulders curving up. The words do not touch Woodman.

Behind Quickman, in the floating screen that was lined on all sides by icons, Woodman could make out where the PET resting in its charger had been turned to face. The lump tucked under the thick covers on the bed rose and fell slowly with Daisuke’s breathing.

“That’s not a bad thing.”


End file.
